BENEATH NOTTINGHAM
DESPITE THE CRUSHING DISAPPOINTMENT they’d been served, there was dinner to be had and Arthur was grateful for it. There was no way of telling the hour, as no church bell could reach them down here beneath the city. Red Fox proved himself the better man by inviting them to share in the meal before they left. There was some sort of stew that smelled of fish but had little meat to it, but plenty of hardbread and heavy wine.
Arthur spent the earlier part of dinner exchanging uneasy glances with David. Every part of Will’s plan had failed. Unless Will miraculously knew of another city where they could recruit men less hostile than these, then this was all an epic mistake. As soon as their meal was over—hell, maybe earlier than that—they needed to get out of Nottingham. Whether that meant they were going to try to tackle the gord outposts all on their own, or if they were going to limp all the way to join Marion in Huntingdon, Arthur didn’t know.
“Is it strange that I sort of liked them?” David muttered, when Will disappeared to find some more drink. “They seem like a good outfit, no wonder they don’t want to join us.”
Arthur eyed him over the lip of his ale horn. “Then again, you’re known for liking terrible things.”
David seemed to take offense to that. “Like what?”
“You like to mix wine and ale.”
“I do.” David grinned. “But not because it tastes better.”
“This,” Arthur put his finger in the air, “is why we shouldn’t trust your opinion.”
“Well maybe you’re right. Maybe these people are terrible things. But there’s a lot to like about terrible things. I trust bitter before I trust happy. A terrible thing is at least a thing that knows itself. You were a terrible thing once, and I chose to like you.”
“No one chooses to like me.” Arthur smiled back. “People like me because I’m so fucking likable.”
David always found something to like in everything. Even when they first met years ago in Sheffield, when Arthur had been trying to smash David’s face into a flatter version of itself—and for good reason—David chose just to smile and introduce himself.
Arthur sometimes wished he were like that. Wished his first instinct was to trust. Admittedly, some of the Lions who came to mingle with them during dinner practically proved David’s point. A great hulking barbarian named the Dawn Dog brought them a horn of a darker beer, and took delight in their reactions to its harsh bite. Two of the ladies lingered to tease them, and gave as much barb as Arthur could dish back. Arthur honestly couldn’t remember the last time he’d had any cunny he hadn’t paid for. But his drinking and laughing was half-hearted at best, his mind was set on how soon he could be anywhere else.
“At least eat up,” David urged him, once he realized Arthur’s mood. “What, you think they’re playing us?”
Arthur just grimaced.
“What’re they gonna take from us? If Red Fox means to kill us, he missed his chance.”
Arthur took another spoonful of the fish soup, then paused. “This stew does taste a bit like poison.”
“It’s not poison, c’est poisson,” David laughed.
“Is that French? Are you talking French at me again?”
“Je ne sais pas.” He ate another spoonful of the stew. “Je suis trop mort.”
Arthur ignored him and surveyed the room. Scarlet poked at his meal, but seemed uninterested in talk. He was wide-eyed and distant—rightfully so, after his failure. Stutely stood the whole time with an odd vigilance, as if to prove himself by staying ever at his highest alert.
After some time, Red Fox ambled over to them along with his cow-woman Caitlin. They stood on a rock tier that was thigh height beside them, so Fox squatted to be at their level. Caitlin’s body was not likely capable of squatting at all.
“Accept my apologies,” Fox said, without his earlier grandeur. “You came here with a lot of assumptions.”
Will Scarlet puffed out his cheeks. “It doesn’t matter.”
“You should have broached the matter with me privately, Will. Perhaps I could have helped you out then.”
Caitlin literally looked down on them. “Did you expect us to let you win, here, in front of everyone?”
Will just shrugged. “I didn’t know you were the man, Freddy.”
“You should have known that.”
“Should have spent the time to know that,” Caitlin threw in. There was something about the Scottish dialect that always made a person sound crasser to Arthur, and Caitlin was particularly Scottish. “But you didn’t bother to ask. You sent us a demand to meet with you, rather than a friendly inquiry. Then you demand we help you with what you want. But you don’t know us. You don’t know what we want.”
“You were always ever impulsive, Will,” Red Fox sighed. “I would like to help you, I would, but a lot of these men don’t know you, and have no reason to trust you. Heavens, some that do know you don’t have reason to trust you.”
“You could have vouched for me.” Will looked up. “Instead of calling me careless.”
Red Fox stood and straightened his long coat with a single motion. “You insulted us, and challenged my authority. And now I offer you our home and our food, rather than beat you merciless and send you away with nothing but bruises. They see this. Actions are something ever finer than words.”
Will pursed his lips. “What good is that now?”
“Depends. Were you planning on giving up so easily?”
Oh fuck, Arthur could see exactly where this was going. “We can’t stay any longer,” he spoke up. “We have to get back to our own people.”
“This was your plan?” asked one of Caitlin’s neck folds. “Drop on by for a night and see how many people will follow you blindly?”
“Stay.” Red Fox knelt again, placing a friendly hand on Will’s shoulder. “Work with us, if only for a bit. I know you, and you’re better than most of this lot, and that quality will shine clearly enough. In time. Let them see it on their own. Let them choose to trust you.”
“We can’t stay,” David insisted. “Nottingham Guard’s building outposts in the forest, we can’t let that happen.”
“Then you’d leave with nothing,” Caitlin mocked, an insulting smile stretching wide. “Is that what you want? Or’d you come for help? We can give it to you, if you’re done chewin’ on your pride.”
“Cait and I talked it over,” Alfred picked up, in gentler tones. “Let me pair you with one of my seconds. Work together for a week or two, prove your interests mirror ours. Prove you have the humility to take orders as well as the competence to issue them. Actions and words, Will. Win yourself what men you need with actions.”
A week or two. Arthur had never heard a worse set of words, in any order. He looked to Will, but his eyes were buried in the table. David seemed proper alarmed at least. If they waited that long to get what they’d come for, it might be too late. But if they left with nothing, how was that better?
Stutely cleared his throat. “We can’t do anything in the forest with just the four of us. If we go now, we can’t stop them. Outposts or not, we need men.”
Arthur hated that Will Stutely of all people was probably right. He turned to their host. “Why help us now? Seemed eager to trounce us earlier.”
Red Fox gave a dismissive snort. “Do not assume this transaction favors you. I have as much to gain from such a partnership, but unlike you I won’t announce my motives for all to scrutinize.”
Will still gave no answer, and Arthur couldn’t guess what was brewing in his head. Arthur half hoped that Will’s spite would get the better of him, that he’d say something perfectly vicious that would burn this bridge forever. It’d just be easier if they didn’t have to make the choice, because he knew that whatever they chose would be the wrong one. They should have left before dinner.
Will stood up to look Red Fox in the eyes. “It’s funny, you were one of the people I was hoping to find here.”
“Well, you found me.”
“One of the ones I was hoping I could convince to come with me.”
“That, I cannot do.” Fox clasped Will’s shoulders briefly, and made to leave. “Would have been fun, though. It’s been a long time since we’ve been in a scrap together.”
“It’d be nice to have you next to me rather than across from me.”
“You never know.” Fox cocked his head. “Maybe we’ll get that chance yet.”
Fucking hell. They were staying.
Arthur didn’t want to stay in Nottingham one more night, be it above or below the streets. “This is you abandoning us,” Marion had said, and she might yet be right. It hurt to think that Arable might assume they’d betrayed them, or that fucking Tuck would speak ill of them at a sermon. He tried to look for a bright side. Maybe it would still pay off. Maybe they’d get so many damned men it’d be worth the wait.
He wanted David’s mind on the matter—he’d find something in it to be happy about. But they were distracted by a clatter from one of the tables. Rob o’the Fire, who became louder and clumsier with each drink, seemed to have found his limit. He made a good go at approaching them from half the room away, though the chamber’s uneven ground worked against him. “Will! Wiiiiiill. So, anyone else we know with you out there in the forest?”
“Old Lions?” Will asked. “No.”
“I always sort of hoped that’s where Crimmy ended up.”
“Fucking Crimmy.” Will shook his head, though Arthur had never heard the name before. “He’s either dead or sitting on a mountain of gold crowns.”
“What about the ghost?” Rob asked.
“Gilbert left before winter. Don’t care where the fuck he is now.”
“Really? We thought he was still with you.” Rob slurred his words, loud enough that most in the room started to watch. “Rumor is he joined the Guard.”
That grabbed Arthur’s attention. Gilbert had vanished after Much’s death, without a single word.
But Will just laughed. “Wouldn’t surprise me, he’d be right at home with those fucks. Again, he abandoned us when things first went bad. Or maybe he was the one what sold us out. Could be anywhere, I suppose.”
“What went bad?”
Will bit his lip, having said too much. They’d become the center of attention. “Nothing. Nothing.”
“Huh.” Rob rolled his tongue in his cheek. “What about Elena?”
Arthur stopped breathing.
“I thought she went off with you?” Rob pushed. “She disappeared right around the same time. She’s not with you?”
Not anymore. Arthur winced. Elena Gamwell had betrayed them, then killed herself for it. Arthur had watched it all, on his knees, gag in mouth, sword at his throat. Watched the whole hideous thing, unable to make a noise, as Will held her body until it shook its last. The memory froze Arthur to the spot, he couldn’t think at all, let alone draw the conversation elsewhere.
Will didn’t move, but his lips just said, “She’s not with us.”
“Damn.” Rob shrugged. “If she was there, I would join you right now. That girl … mmmm. Best fuck I ever had.”
The room was silent, Arthur had no air at all, too slow to stop it.
“She liked it from behind,” Rob continued. “She wanted you to grab her hair and pull…”
The first punch broke Rob’s jaw. Arthur caught a flash of Will’s face that chilled him to the core. Not because of the hatred or the fury within it, but because it was absent. Will wasn’t there. His features were relaxed, his eyes elsewhere, even as he drove his knuckles down into Rob’s neck, his cheek, his teeth. He grabbed the man’s head and wrenched him away, down to the floor so that he could drive his boot into it, and Rob’s nose burst bloody from both sides.
Arthur stood and grabbed a knife from the table, at the ready, though frankly he wasn’t sure if he meant to defend Scarlet or help take him down. There were, very likely, only seconds left before they were all killed, so it probably didn’t fucking matter what Arthur did.
But somehow, the Red Lions didn’t rush them. They stood at bay, perhaps waiting for instruction. Rob o’the Fire’s body was motionless on the ground, a grotesque whistling wheeze the only proof he was still alive. Will stared at each of them, off kilter, as if he had not yet seen what he’d done.
Then suddenly he was back, casual and smiling. “Oh shit, look at this fellow.”
He nudged Rob’s body with a toe, but didn’t seem to care any further than that. Instead he turned to the crowd.
“I came here looking for men, and all I found were little boys. Crying about their fucking ears. I’ve watched my friends die, the best people I’ve ever known, murdered by the shitholes who run this city. We’re trying to make a difference, to bring some sort of fucking justice … and here you all are, doing your best to not be noticed and calling that bravery. You’re right, you do deserve to be called Robin Hood, because that’s the same bullshit he tried to sell us. You’re hiding in these fucking caves and blaming it on me? Fuck that. You put yourselves here. Me? I’m the only one who can lead you out of here. Out of these tunnels, out of the slums, all the way up to the fucking rock.”
He reached a hand behind his back and slipped one of his twin blades out, a long fat guardless dagger. “You don’t get to wonder if I’m good enough to be with you…” he said, reached up and holy fuck—
Will stretched his own left earlobe out with one hand and drew the knife up to its base, then slashed up and forward, ripping the flesh in a long red streak that tore halfway up the side of his ear before it snapped off in a bloody lump that he flicked down onto Rob’s chest.
“… I get to decide if you’re good enough to be with me.”
He put the knife away without even wiping the blood off, turned, and walked out of the Lions Den.
THEY STAYED ANOTHER DAY.
At Arthur’s insistence, they spent their last good coin on a single room at a not-too-sketchy inn called The Peach and the Pear, named after the streets on either side of it. Their window was Pear-side, and looked down into a small courtyard that stank of gutted fish. Down the street, a blanket of smoke rose from cooking fires that littered both sides of the wharfs. Arthur tested the sill of the window, eased some oil into its hinges, and memorized the quickest path out and down. His gut told him he’d be fleeing through that window in the middle of the night.
By staying, they invited retaliation.
“They’ll come,” Will said.
That’s what Arthur was afraid of.
“They don’t know where we are,” David answered.
“They know.”
Will had refused at first to let them treat his ear, until Arthur forced the matter. They boiled water over the hearth in the inn’s main room and used it to wash off the dried blood. The bottom lobe of his ear was gone, along with a thin strip around the outside that lashed gruesome all the way to the top.
“Or as I like to say,” David described it, “all the most sensitive bits.”
“Your ears were always too big,” Arthur tried to joke, but not to be funny. It was because—he realized—he was now afraid of Will Scarlet. Had David cut his ear off, Arthur would’ve sat him down and torn him in half with reproach. But Will Scarlet was something else now, and Arthur didn’t want to risk waking whatever demon it was that lurked in his soul. Like an unruly child, it was better to simply pacify him than to try anything resembling reason.
Somehow it fell on Arthur to burn out the wound. He was more experienced with such things than he wanted to be, but certainly not enough to know what the fuck he was doing. He had to pay a full shilling for a bundle of incense at an apothecary in the part of town they called the Parlies. But no spice could hide the sting of burning flesh as he touched the flame into each part of the exposed wound. Will kicked and bit into a heavy glove, and even passed out before it was done, which at least made it easier to finish. The wound hardened well enough—there was no blood or pus, though it was wicked to look upon.
“Is he…?” Stutely asked, watching from the door with horror.
“No, he’s not dead.” Arthur blew out the incense. “I think he’ll be okay.”
“No, I mean … is he … insane?”
Neither Arthur nor David answered, which was very likely a bad sign.
Maybe he’d been wrong, earlier. Maybe Scarlet was nothing but burnt tree. Maybe the forest was gone.
“I’m not cutting my ear off,” Stutely announced, though it seemed to take most of his bravery to say so. He shut his mouth tight, sealing his beard together in a great mess. “Not because I’m afraid to, but because it’s smarter not to.”
Arthur wanted to explain that none of them were going to follow Will’s particular lead on this one, but there was no point. He was tired, and the room smelled of acrid flesh, and he was trapped in an unfamiliar city where they’d just made enemies instead of allies. Once Will was capable of leaving, they would.
Anybody who follows him is going to drown …
YOU’RE DROWNING, ARTHUR.
Arthur startled awake, not even realizing he’d laid down. It was a quiet knock on the door that roused him, which whispered open before he could move. But it was not a burly bunch of Lions come to pay their due in blood, just a tiny little frame that slipped in and closed the door behind herself.
“Sounds like it didn’t go so well,” Zinn said, tugging at her own hair.
Arthur rolled back down. “Oh you heard that, didcha? Word travels fast.”
“Hiya, Zinn.” David smiled. She opened her mouth at him comically wide, then kicked at Will Scarlet’s foot as a somber greeting.
“How’d you know we were here?” Arthur asked.
She responded with an eye roll for the ages.
“Never mind. So what have you heard?”
“Half the Red Lions want to kill you, sounds like. But the other half think you’re pretty fucking slag.”
Pretty fucking slag? Was that a thing? Arthur suddenly felt old.
“You’re not just checking in on us.” Will said it from where he lay, eyes still closed. Arthur hadn’t even realized he was awake. “Are they using you to send a message?”
“They are.” She did not, however, elaborate.
“Well?” David asked.
“I’m deciding if I want to tell you.”
“Why wouldn’t you want to tell us?” Arthur asked.
“You said some pretty nasty things to me.”
“Aw, fuck me,” Arthur grumbled. “We were trying to protect you.”
“You called me a cunt.”
“Well you are a cunt.” Arthur made a face at her. Still, she was the closest thing they had to a friend in the city. “But you’re pretty fucking slag for a cunt. Now out with it.”
That actually seemed to please her quite well. “Red Fox says his offer stands. You work with someone of his choosing, help out on a couple of particular jobs, and they’ll decide later if they’d rather work with you or kill you.”
“Fack.” David rolled his eyes. “He already offered us that. Fat good your little stunt did us, Will. What about the outposts?”
“Forget the outposts.” Will’s voice had an odd calm. “Marion’s not in the Sherwood anymore, and neither are we. So let ’em waste their time looking for us there. Like it or not, Freddy was right about one thing—if we want to make a real difference, we can’t do it from the forest.”
“So … what?” David asked. “We join with them?”
“No. They join us.”
Zinn snorted again.
“They will.” Will seemed unnaturally sure of that. “I like Freddy, but I don’t trust him, and I don’t think his men do, either. They’re just waiting for a real leader. He wants us to work with one of his seconds? I guarantee whoever it is will try to play us, but we can play him right the fuck back. Pretend we’re going along for the ride, but when the time’s right, we take control. Trust me, the only way to rise in the Red Lions is to fuck over the person above you.”
“So … we’re staying again?” David’s question was really for Arthur. For the thousandth time, they begged each other for agreement. If he wanted to leave, Arthur would go with him right now and leave Will behind. As far as he was concerned, David was the goddamned moral weather vane of the world. So if he somehow thought they ought to stay, then Arthur couldn’t jump ship. They couldn’t watch each other’s backs if they weren’t right next to each other.
And again—if they left now, this was all for nothing.
“Yeah, I think we’re staying,” Arthur answered, each word tasting worse than the last.
“Fack.” David scratched his head. “Well, Zinn, you’ve been decent enough to us so far. Looks like we’re joining the Red Lions. Care to tag along? You want a lift up the ranks? We could use help from someone who knows the city.”
“No,” Will answered before she even opened her mouth. “She’s too young. Sorry, that’s just how it is, sweet pea.”
She stared at him, some dark fire inside her burning, but she was thankfully smart enough not to argue back.
“So when do we meet our new bossman?” Arthur asked.
Zinn’s eyes didn’t leave Will, but she curled her lip and threw him every inch of her twelve-year-old spite. “Oh, you’ve already met her. You cunts are mine. Welcome to the Red Lions. You do everything I say, exactly how I say, or I’ll cut your balls off. Learn your fucking place. Sorry,” she winked, “that’s just how it is, sweet pea.”